Folks can’t grasp the singular they don’t totally break their brains.
The “purists” will insist that True Southerners never use “y’all” for a single person. My experience is that it was used that way quite often. A checkout clerk would ask me “Did y’all find what what you needed?” I look around. Just me. Ditto when dining alone: “Do y’all want anything else?” And on and on.
It’s also used as a generic filler. E.g., chef Paula Deen on her old show would say stuff like “Y’all, I’m gonna put this in a 350 degree oven.” Replace the “y’all” with “you” and think about that sentence.
Basically, you can use it all sorts of ways and most people won’t even notice.
I’ve found that “you all” works fine for me if I don’t want the folksy feel of y’all.
And I don’t get how people here can read posts from women saying they don’t like it but don’t bother to complain, and then think “none of the women I know mind” is a good argument.
markn_1, you must be fun at parties.
Hey, gang, anybody agree with me that addressing a group of only women as “guys” is worse than addressing a mixed gender group that way?
How about “comrades”?
5 posts were merged into an existing topic: Trock Flightless Posts
Y’all is all inclusive. One, two…many.
Its a perfect term for this.
Y’all welcome, from: a not necessarily born but raised in the deep south, southerner.
Don’t hate us because we coined the perfect answer to this problem.
Y’all come for Chicken ‘n’ Dumplings, soon.
And when society does not have a unified definition then what?
Where I grew up, y’all was singlular or plural, but if you wanted an emphatic plural, you used alluh’ y’all.
As to “guys,” I’m resigned to it, but try this: Instead of guys, call a group of men gals. I guarantee they won’t find that gender neutral, and many will perceive it as an insult. Or instead of mankind, try womankind. The “generics” aren’t generic, but masculine (pro)nouns extended to females. Reverse it and enjoy the umbrage.
I certainly am. I’m so much fun that I rarely get invited more than once. I assume most people can’t handle that much fun.
That works, tovarich.
My Son calls all the mix gender grandkids “Ladies”.
I’ll have to tell him about this thread.
Oh and “Gang” will get nervous pittering from a school administration. And outright guffaws if its teens in the audience.
“Friends” or “my friends” seems to be a favored phrase of second language English speakers. I say we adopt that. Americans are too stingy with that word.
Which might be one of the reasons a woman might abstain from complaining about it, unfortunately-to get along and not be treated with kid gloves. It might be a total coincidence that such things just happen to favor the male over the female, but I doubt it. Are there any common terms that have supposedly become used by both males and females that have a female origin?
That suggests the threat of billiards and the need for a marching band.
You are missing the point of this thread.
Some people (primarily women) don’t like the usage of a term like “guys” as a general-neutral collective noun, because it was originally a specifically-male term. Even if many people now don’t see it as exclusively male, some still do.
Yes, eventually, it may be that, years from now, everybody will feel that “guys” is entirely gender-neutral. In the meantime, it’s still not there, and if one cares about others’ feelings, maybe one should be careful about its use.
“Guys” has been used by me (F) and my school buddies as a gender-neutral term for 60 years now. Six decades.
Yeah. For anyone who doesn’t get the reference:
When I was young, I knew at least one older lady who objected to the word “kids” being used for young people. That’s offensive! “Kids” are goats!
It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered anyone who was bothered by that.
But the point is that words acquire different accepted meanings and connotations to different people depending on when and where they’ve lived and what they’re used to. I suspect that “guys” falls into this category (as do “y’all” and singular “they” and plenty of others).
Yep, me too. Midwest?
I have had the same experience. I’ve used it for years as a gender neutral word. If someone were to complain then I would not use it around those people but it’s never come up as long as I’ve been using it.
Considering the discussion in this thread, there are at least some people who don’t like it, but maybe they don’t feel confrontational enough to actually complain about it.